OpenClaw is a self-hosted, hackable personal AI assistant and autonomous agent platform that provides 'eyes and hands' — it can browse the web, read and write files, run shell commands, and execute automated workflows. It supports persistent memory, multi-model flexibility (cloud or local models), proactive background workers, and an extensible skills/plugin ecosystem. Users interact via existing chat apps or a Web UI while the assistant runs locally or in the cloud, maintaining privacy and giving technical users full control over integrations and automation.